The RA's Role

The RA’s Role

The RA handles any issues that may arise on the hall. When issues such as roommate conflicts occur and you and your roommate are not able to resolve it yourselves, you are asked to speak with you RA. Your RA will talk with you and your roommate separately to get each of your perspectives. Your RA is there to facilitate a conversation. Your RA will then meet with you and your roommate in a neutral location such as the RA’s room. Both you and your roommate will get to discuss your side of the story and will generate suggestions as to how to fix the problem. Your roommate contract will also be discussed and any violations to it will be noted.

The purpose of an RA mediation is not to determine who is right and who is wrong, but instead it is for the RA to act as an impartial third party who can hopefully get both you and your roommate to talk about the issues in a safe environment. Through this conversation, you should be able to come up with compromises and find ways to continue to live together.

If the situation is not able to be mediated (based off your RAs perspective), then your RA will suggest that you all contact a member of the Residence Life and Housing Professional Staff. In these cases, the Office of Residence Life and Housing reserves the right to do the any of the following:

• Allow a willing student to move out of the room. Sometimes one of the students involved in a roommate issue has a friend that has an accidental single that they would rather live with or we have an accidental single and they would rather just move in with someone they do not know.
• Host another mediation that a Mentor RA or Professional Staff oversees.
• Move one of the students out of the room into another room on campus (this is in accordance with our housing contract)
• Move both students out of the room (this is in accordance with our housing contract).
• Suggest that the 2 roommates find another room where 2 students are living and have a four way roommate switch.